I do kinda love this quote, from another site and another Web-surfing session entirely: 'All fiction is women's fiction. Women's fiction is redundant. At the launch for my new book last week, I had an audience of 130 people and 120 of them were women. "Isn't that weird?" someone asked. I said: "I think it's wonderful." '

I was reading SOMEWHERE yesterday that basically middle aged women are what drives the fiction industry in this country. If I find this article I shall link it...

I went on a binge. My desire to not have stomach upset and hair loss got run over roughshod by my missing my daily dose of Ta entirely too much. Agitated now. But loving Rachel Maddow. I suppose it's a fair trade.

I can't even advise not reading comments. There's some great freaking stuff in the comments, as always. But there's always ONE.

Burn the Burqa (THIS TITLE IS MISLEADING. Good comments here, lots of salient information from a variety of POVs, including how the French "national myth" is not the same as the US one, and how -- well, every country has its dark and light side. To idolize is just as destructive as to demonize.)

This and this depressed the merry HELL out of me fairly recently and for quite a long time. I have not discussed this, but it's been weeks (hmm, it has not been weeks, but damn if it hasn't felt like forever).

And yes, variety is good and sameness doesn't solve everything, or much of anything at all. People are people and power is power. (ROBOT UNDERCLASS! ENSLAVE THE DROIDS! ASIMOVIAN LAWS! EXPLOIT THE -- ahem. Excuse me. I don't know WHERE that came from...)

"The culture is complicated--and its more American than it is hood. I would encourage people to think about all the negative ways we cope. The upper-class may not be fat, but in my experience, they know their way around the tequila bottle. "

T-N Coates: No Black People on Seinfeld, Please: "I don't racialize those moments to take away anything, but to say this--I am fucking sick of hearing about black people in the 60s. At least I am sick of hearing about in the way we discuss, like only Abraham Lincoln happened before Martin Luther King, like everyone marched on Washington, or grew an Afro. I am just tired.

I want to hear about white people, now. Not their mythologizing and blind glamor, and not their cynical, infantile backlashing against that blind glamor (No more whining about how much the suburbs suck, please.) I want to hear something humble about a world I can't even envision, because here is the thing: If you tell me about that world, if you tell me something I don't know, and tell me about it in all its lush beauty, and rank hypocrisy, I will see myself in you. You don't have to show me my pedigree. Just show me yours. Don't try to be "inclusive." Just try to be human. Just tell me a story."

...the important point that anti-gay marriage campaigns in the black community, have at once exploited homophobia and racial prejudice. But the gay activists in the District have been able to fight back, not because they've done outreach to the black community, but because they are the black community...."

Here's something...not all that pressing, but a little pressing. It's been on my mind. I have a question (both gender-identity and sexual-orientation related) and would not like to spout off ignorantly, in case anyone wants to weigh in, please? : ( Read more... )

ADDENDUM: I don't have the book on me now, but if I get a chance I'll try to post the excerpts. Thanks much!

Really good Ta Nehisi post on the derailment of the black conservative tradition in the U.S.

I've been (slowly) making my way through this Booker T. Washington biography. It really is a great read. But that aside, I think that it also highlights a great tragedy in race relations in this country. Washington is arguably the most effective and powerful black conservative in this country's history.

[....]

You must understand the chilling effect this had to have on black people. To actually concede to all the racist propaganda out there, and then to be rewarded by hooligans burning down your community must have been psychologically devastating. People wondering why the GOP can't get a foothold in the black community, need to not just think about Goldwater and Nixon. They should think about Du Bois telling black men to go fight in The Great War, and then having those veterans come home to the Red Summer of 1919. They should think about the pogroms that greeted Booker T's compromise. There's a lot of hurt out there. A lot of ancient hurt. A lot of it, even in these times, quite deep.